10 Seconds
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: I am determined to make Duo fall in love with me. I have recently discovered that one can do so to another in only ten seconds, if they wish, and I have not been able to think of anything else since. [Angst, Fluff] [HeeroDuo?]
1. basic expressions

**A/N:**Short series about the terror of falling in love without knowing how; inspired by a real book I purchased and literal quotations in the text. Hopefully, this won't be a long, drawn-out affair. A little angst, a little fluff, and a lot of Heero denial.

* * *

**10 Seconds** by Kaitsurinu

* * *

Chapter 1 _basic expressions_

I am determined to make Duo fall in love with me. I have recently discovered that one can do so to another in only ten seconds, if they wish, and I have not been able to think of anything else since.

It was study period when I made the discovery. The rest of the class is generously spaced apart, in their respective groups, at the circular tables filling the boarding school library, while Duo and I are sequestered in our own little corner, alone. The most difficult thing for him in these places has always been obeying school schedules under the pretense of actually being an enrolled student, and he has his head buried in his arms on the table, sleeping. I sit across from him, awake, watching him for a spell. Assignments and homework and an algebra book lay stacked before me, untouched. Duo's pile is spilled over the floor carelessly at his feet.

I simply watch his back gently rise and fall until intellectual boredom sets in. Then I rise from the table, and walk quietly into the towering bookshelves, each replete with old, musty books and newly tattered ones. I run my eyes over each spine without care. The titles flow into my consciousness as quickly as they flow back out, a memory instantly tossed aside as another comes into focus. I know not how long I do this, for Duo sleeps throughout, until I find myself in the human biology section, amused by the colorful titles there. But among the rest, one spine protrudes into the corridor, instantly drawing my eyes. Drawn, I pick it up.

It is a publication dedicated entirely to the human face. For some reason, I am riveted enough by just the cover not to immediately put it back. I have no intention of actually taking any books from the library shelves, but I take this one. I open it and curiosity induces me to flip the first few pages, soon confronted by the image of beautiful woman's face in close-up, green eyes gazing up at me with temptation. I find myself flipping the next; an old man with a painted face greets me opposite that.

A young Indian girl bedecked in jewels, eyes rimmed in blue and pink, gazing shyly at the camera. Identical twin girls in innocent straw hats. A dark woman in a white shirt; a pale man in a black one. A black and white horror still, a woman's face contorted in a scream. A young boy begrudgingly crying.

I do not realize that I have sunk back into an old reading chair sitting across from me, dusty from years of remaining unused. I read on, about the first creatures to have a pair of eyes, the darker nature of male skin, the Golden Mean, the complex mesh of muscles taken to produce a smile, the basic expressions possessed by every human being—fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise and contempt. Entranced by the color of each different face presented and fed by the information, I sit there in silence, forgetting time and reality, thinking about anything but how I am a soldier between missions, falsely enrolled as Odin Hito.

I read on, continuing to a passage about the 'conscious smile'.

'_We all have a natural smile, the basic and universally recognized expression of happiness. When happy, we make this expression whether or not anyone else is around. Of course, in everyday life we also put on conscious smile. These are smiles that are not natural expressions of happiness, but are for purposed of communication. They help to smooth the path of social interaction. Sometimes they are used to hid natural expressions, which would give away too much of how we are really feeling_.'

That's when I lift my head and look at Duo. He sleeps at the table, face buried away in his arms from the overhead lights, motionless. Even as I force my eyes on the text again and continue, I think of him. I read of the genuine smile of true happiness and enjoyment, the Duchenne smile, and think of him. I think of him, replaying the shape of his mouth, and trying to remember just how his eyes looked. I become increasingly curious to know which Duo uses around me—the contrived or the real.

I read on for pages, though, to try and concentrate on something other than him. And I manage this, until I pass a large, fuzzy, black and white photograph of three young children, smiling happily as they huddle close for the camera. On the next page, I begin to read the next segment, entitled '_Eye-to-Eye_'.

'_In normal conversation, the periods of eye contact are very short_…'

I see in my mind's eye Duo's glancing at me we sit in last hour, as I say something offhandedly about the inferiority of the professor, and he agrees with a nod and a smiling word.

'_We glance up at one another for brief periods of about three seconds, but will hold one another's gaze for only a second or two—any longer makes the speaker and the looker feel nervous…_'

I see Duo's face as he walks into the dorm room, our eyes meeting, something to others otherwise mundane, but for us charged with information. We are both fighting the same secret and terrible war, and our gazes remain for a fragment longer than natural rhythm dictates. Duo looks away first, and begins talking haphazardly about our cramped room, and I glance down to the glowing laptop screen.

'_Prolonged eye-to-eye contact of more than ten seconds indicates that one of two things are about to happen—the two people are preparing to fight, or make love!_'

I almost see Duo, chest bare, lips parted, his hair unwinding around his face, coming closer to me, a hand raised to hold my cheek—but it is not real. But still feel my heart rate leap and blood flood when I look over at him.

I'm electrified for the rest of the day.


	2. swallowed an anvil

**A/N: **For all of you wondering, yes, it is a real book, by the name of _The Human Face_ by Brian Bates. Got it myself from Barnes and Nobles, if you'd like to know. Thank you to all the readers and reviewers, as well. Hope it remains as good as you hope ;).

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Chapter 2 _swallowed an anvil_

We sit and eat in the cafeteria an hour later and I am still thinking about that book. I had put it immediately back after that passage. I had lost interest in reading, instead absorbed in my false memory of Duo it instilled in me. I look at him when he is not looking at me, cheerlessly digesting the cheap meal and twirling his fork in the freeze-dried mashed potatoes.

I am terrified, suddenly, to make eye contact with him, something I avoided even as I returned to the table, even as he woke to the bell and we left the library. I feel now that if I do, something terrible and unpredictable will happen, something that never happened before.

Whenever he looks at me, I look down at my plate. It's full. I'm not hungry—I'm completely conscious of where his eyes rest and they rest on my face with unexplained heat. It prevents an ounce of productive work.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asks.

"Aa." I nod, so I don't have to look him in the eye. "I'm just not hungry."

Duo gives me an appraising look, though his expression doesn't change. "Are you sure? I mean, you're gonna need your energy, and you're not even really paying for this crappy food. You should eat up." He pauses and leans ever so slightly forward. I'm surprised that I can hear the slightest shift of his weight above my heart creeping into my mouth. "Yer not sick or anything, are you?"

I push a carrot with my fork. A sorry attempt to fool him. "No." I stab it and put it in my mouth and chew and swallow. But all the time I am thinking of him.

"You know, you do look kind of pale. You sure you're really feeling okay, Heero? Need to rest up a while or something?"

"That's alright," I tell him, hopefully hiding any anxiety behind a carefully measured monotone. I can tell his dislike for it, that automatic tone of voice, when his shoulders droop a little, the corner of his mouth drifting astray in discontent. "I don't get sick. It's just a trick of the light."

I tie up my mouth by taking a drink of milk—in hopes to avoid having to answer another question while my heart inexplicably drums against my ribcage—and get a glance of his face. My heart was already thumping uneasily, anyway. He's hidden that disappointment in lack of response in his casual (contrived) smile. One corner slings back in a devil-may-care smirk.

But his concern has laid a hand around my neck, squeezing off the air, and I know it is still there even as I rest the empty glass and wasted distraction next to my full plate. What I cannot ascertain is why it has this peculiar affect on me and how another's internal sentiment could be so physically palpable. I feel his eyes burn, suspicion rising, on my face.

With a sigh of resignation, he simply arches his eyebrows and mutters, "Well, as long as you don't toss your cookies during the mission," and returns to begrudgingly eating his own tasteless lunch.

* * *

Duo and I are allies. We fight the same enemy. We come from the colonies, we share hardships of battle, neither of us have our childhood or youth to spend as we wish. I may have stolen from him, and he may have shot me, but we are not really enemies. I wouldn't fight him given the choice. I can reasonably ascertain from his behavior that neither would he. So, logically, there must only be one other response if I were to look him in the eye for a prolonged time. If I look him in the eye for more than ten seconds, then he must fall in love with me.

It is my new objective, and I am determined to test it. I am determined to make him fall in love with me.

I wait cautiously until after classes have long been over, until we are withdrawn into our shared dormitory. My laptop remains untouched on the desk where I had set it upon enrolling and moving into this small space. Out of custom, I remain at the desk, while Duo lies on the bed on his stomach, bemoaning the useless nature of school. I turn my head to look at him. I'm eager to test my experiment, though I will not know what to do if it fails. To be honest I don't know what I'll do if I succeed, either.

I feel like I've swallowed an anvil—he's not looking, but instead restlessly rising off the bed, eyes anywhere but where I want them. But he senses my movement and I sense his in response, turning his head to glance back at me, pinching his lips together, and scrunching his nose.

Compromised, I quickly bow my head to its previous position, hoping he has not noticed. The image of him is burned into my mind as I regroup and rethink my tactic. He watches me for a moment, still painted with that expression, then returns to his usual pattern of aimless chatter to fill the air. The first minor setback feels like burning failure.

I have suddenly been hijacked of my normal, confident and levelheaded manner and I am half myself, the desirable half receding into flushed fear of making a fool of myself. I do not realize then that I am already in the process. Should he glance back and see me, clumsily fighting for eye contact not normally afforded to me, I feel I might never forget the embarrassment, should he give me a strange look and ask offensively, either with his eyes or his mouth, just what I did I think was doing?

Nerves have arrived. I do not want to helplessly stumble in, I do not like feeling I have no control over the situation. So I decide to regroup before making any rash move—if only to soothe my wounded sense of confidence at this sudden affliction. This weakness that has come at me with no fair warning and taken the courage out of my very bones; this strange spell that I have fallen into at the slightest glance, solely because of the words of a book.

I sit silently there until he falls asleep.


	3. curiosity

Chapter 3 _curiosity_

The next day brings the same opportunities, but they have grown larger in my sleep and loom higher when school begins and I am awaiting another chance to test my theory. I go through the motions to get me through the morning, but Duo has risen before me and gone—no doubt to spend his time soliciting "smokes" from the miscreants who climb onto the roof to conceal their activities.

While making a routine casing of the school, walking the grounds once or twice to get a soldier's feel for the buildings, he had stumbled across them. He later professed to me the joy he got from feigning hesitance to try a cigarette and acting the timid, corruptible, naïve youth. The delinquents only thought they were having more fun. He will occasionally travel back there in the mornings, if only to threaten the kids with ratting on a professor and watch their faces contort and listen to them quickly offer him a full pack of cigarettes, which they scrapped their meager allowances together in order to pay an older classmate to buy for them. I remember the animated retelling with a nameless swell in my chest, picturing the humorous face he made, imitating another student "taking a drag" and choking.

I've seen him do it once before. In the dark hanger, the round, orange tip glowed, painting his face ever so faintly. I could see the silent, reverent expression as he stood there, gazing down at his Gundam, mind travelling far away from his body and tails of smoke gently puffing from his lips. His eyelashes were accented against his skin in the deep orange-red cast, making me count each before I could physically tear my gaze away, like a pining vampire.

I had then continued adjusting the operating systems in my own mobile suit, pushing the image away, for work had to be done. I only wonder now what he could have possibly been thinking so quietly about for so long, until the cigarette had nearly burnt down to his lips, my attention won again only when he swore and quickly spat it out, almost scalding himself.

I rise, shower, and dress less guardedly this morning than I had prepared myself for. I emerge from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and await Duo's drawl of complaint that I could have the decency to turn on the fan, or crack the door and am left wanting. His bed is unusually straightened and made. But his books again have been left in their haphazard pile.

Alone, I walk to my first hour class.

* * *

At study period, I am left to my own devices at my secluded table. Duo has not shown his face and the supervisor impassively glances over his empty seat before continuing his silent head count. Not an expression crosses his face when he glides down to the next name, pen arched at the ready. Somehow it feels like a slow knife dancing across my chest. Perhaps it is only because it reiterates the fact Duo is strangely absent, but I make sure to bury an unpleasant look in his back when it is turned for good measure.

A few minutes pass, anxious hope abounds, but they fade into a period of acceptance of the fact. I sit at the table, watching the doors. Duo is not coming to this study period and suddenly the gentle, book-burdened walls of the library are likened to a cage.

I want to know why Duo has not shown up. I want to know why he was not present in the morning, why he has left me without a hint of explanation. It's not his usual way.

I glance backwards a moment at the supervisor. He is busily typing at his computer and pausing to shift the piles of papers, picking out pieces of information. He has not glanced at his charges for some time now, as they are slowly flexing their rebellious natures in absence of regulation and crowding together in raucous groups. Some leak out into the hallway, successful. They laugh with their fellow conspirators and stroll off to parts unascertainable.

And it is then that I allow my eyes a light of inspiration, rationing my time glancing between the beckoning door and the supervisor.

It has now been a full five minutes. This cannot continue. My legs lift me into action, unable to withstand the beckon of my curiosity. I make as if I am simply wandering into the shelves of books surrounding us, perhaps a supplement to a literature class in which I pretend to enroll, something perfectly inconspicuous in a place like this. I will make it to the doors, slowly but surely, and my eyes train on the supervisor as I walk cautiously.

Duo would have been a much better actor, had our roles been reversed, and would have not needed such a visual dependence. He would have strolled, the picture of unaffected absorption, making the laziest and most purposeful beeline toward his target, and gotten their in seemingly mere moments. But I lack this skill—I need direct information and will sacrifice a portion of my credibility for security of knowledge. I am not what Duo is, but I can still achieve what I want. My eyes do not leave the supervisor's concentrated expression and gliding fingertips as I walk, crossing the open aisles.

It is by chance that I pass through a familiar aisle as I begin my inconspicuous curve towards the doors. It is not my fault that I cannot refocus my attention the moment I catch sight of it—I know fully where it is. It jumps into my vision and I cannot help but to pause and glance at the spine. I feel a trickle of electricity carve its way through to my fingertips.

I see Duo again, unreal. And I want that unreality, however brief, again.

I hesitate for a moment as a part of me, which I had not quite realized existed, urged to take it from the shelf and open it. Open it to the page, read the words, and replay a incomprehensible image. But somehow I push past it, even as the unreal Duo's hand comes and touches the side of my face, and quietly stalk out of the aisle of books, holding close to the wall.

The doors beckon. I believe this is what American slang dictates as "home free," with a little smirk growing in the corner of my mouth, but it short-lived. I turn my head at the sound of the supervisor's voice calling a false name assigned to me, and immediately drop any hint of expression of all.

"Mr. Hito?" I hear the little spores of contempt catching hold in his tone. He knew exactly where I was headed, even though I've since turned to face him and his condemning volume. "You're missing out on valuable study time. Wouldn't you like to return to your seat?"

"Yes, sir," I say, my lips moving without my notice. I let it go. My shoulders loosen, my jaw slackens, and my mouth evens out. I don't display a single thing as I return, impassively, to my empty table and waste the remainder of the hour tearing my mind apart with curiosity of Duo's whereabouts and status.

I missed out on valuable study time, anyway.


	4. eons in their own right

Chapter 4 _eons in their own right_

It becomes a chess game, I feel, this new obsession fallen upon me. But I am the only one aware of the players. I discover just how vigilant I am when I notice every hair-thin movement of every vaguely familiar color, figure, or hint of resemblance in the crowed room. I travel in such manner through the rest of the morning and my feet take me along while my mind is constantly away, picking through the faces around me like an ever-growing card deck, searching for one discarded joker.

It is somehow not a feeling I like, with each alien face a weight added to that growing sensation I can no longer call curiosity. Curiosity does not make something cold and heavy but hollow drop in to the pit of my stomach, dragging something jagged through my throat, every time I swear to catch a glimpse of Duo only to move on to the next, hoping this time to be right. But I never seem to be, and the moments between the bells have become eons in their own right, millenniums with kings and kingdoms of anxiety seeming to oppress and destroy. They pass in a fleeting eternity, only to be followed by another, and yet again another.

For as long as I can lucidly remember, I have been drilled and washed with physics and theorems, but I cannot even comprehend this strange warp in time as my feet take me through the halls, guiding me to my next class. And it is fully all Duo's fault. I think I might have been angry with him, if it were not my only thought at the moment to discover where he had gone.

Duo is capable, beyond any other adjective. Capable of gentle, smiling deceit, and screaming, silent retribution. And capable of making anyone believe he is capable of any particular feat at any time.

The bell calls out over head. Pre-Colony History 101 awaits. I dread it now, in that same, inexplicable, unfailing way that also compels me to pause at the door to the auditorium where this massive class and stare out at the hallway. It is only one hour before lunch—students brim to the very walls, forming a talking, walking river seemingly impossible to cross at certain points.

I don't doubt his ability to fend for himself—it is just the same as mine—but time erodes this confidence I have about him. The longer I go without hide nor hair of a message or glimpse of him about his normal haunts, the more the level-headed part of my mind recedes into some histrionic drive of worry. Yes, now I can surely assign a name to this feeling. Even though I don't like it, that is what it must be.

I'm going to kill him for doing this to me, I swear.

And then, my heart is again abruptly crawling into my mouth, and for a moment I trace Duo's path through the bustling crowd before me without registering it, dazed. My eyes follow him and my mind floats, distanced, simply absorbing the image. Strange, hot adrenaline shoots through to my fingertips, then I blink and my mind catches up. He's weaving silently through the crowd, eyes fixated ahead of him as he moves purposefully between the civilians. Going somewhere. Somewhere, which happens to _not _be our current class.

"Duo—"

Some strangled sound comes out of my mouth, but not nearly loud enough for him to hear. It is some echo of my thoughts, where his name has been terrorizing me for some time this morning. A halfway sound.

He knows I am here. Duo is smarter than that, I know, but he doesn't even acknowledge me, standing there, brushing the doorframe and watching him intently.

Why doesn't he turn and look at me?

Not even for a message? The briefest of glances could tell me all I really needed to know—though at that moment, I feel a pang, realizing I would _want_ more—but I am denied even that. It is entirely unfair, and completely selfish of him.

I deserve to know what he's been doing and if he's somehow jeopardized our covers. I deserve more than what I've received, standing here, motionless, and tracing his disappearance around the corner, with naught but my new, histrionic self to gape in his wake.

I dislike this completely.

But I follow.

* * *

I am suddenly more tired than I have ever known. It seeps into my very bones and mixes oily with the strange, taxing sensation already lying there, courtesy of my comrade himself, when I nudge open the dormitory door. Duo does not stir—he remains sitting on the bed, motionless, facing the opposing wall as if it were telling him some great secret. The slightest tilt of his head, and he glances at me over his shoulder. It pins my throbbing heart against the wall, that lifeless expression he gives me, tinted with the tiniest twinge of dissatisfaction. Lips cemented together unhappily, lids heavy and apathetic, old lines appearing in an old face—this is not the Duo I've seen before. This is not the kind of Duo I want to witness, either.

He turns and watches the wall after that.

I am abruptly lost as to what I should do next. The distant, cold violet of his eyes inexplicably wraps an equally cold hand around my throat, just squeezing off my heart, which has steadily climbed as far as it can safely go by now. My stomach marches and flips over and marches back again within my belly. I enjoy the feeling even less now. It's all dread.

I feel almost stupid, standing there, hands at my side, just watching him, but nothing comes to me. I only turn to shut the door silently behind me, but after I accomplish that, I am just as perplexed as I was to begin with, but now I am trapped with that confusion, and Duo.

"Duo." I somehow can't bring myself to ask him what he did. The key part of my cardiovascular functioning is currently pinned to the wall behind me, so perhaps I can't be completely to blame.

He blinks at that sound but pays it no real mind. When I remain motionless in a fixated spot of terror and dread, he only rustles slightly on the edge of his bed. His arm moves, then comes the gentle metallic _chink_ of a lighter catching flame and, bowing his head, takes a cigarette from the pack surreptitiously pinched between his thighs. The long braid of hair currently curled up on his shoulder lolls down over his back as he moves, and takes the first, long drag from his cigarette, flicks the lighter close, and remains silent.

I try again. I am nothing if not thorough. "Where were you?"

Not a response at all. Now I am becoming rather dissatisfied with this behavior of his. If only he would give me more than some precursory glance, laced with a small but growing contempt, something I have not earned nor truly deserve. But the silence lingers on. I have not hated the lack of Duo's voice so much—not even as much as he has hated the silence on my part.

I squint at the glowing orange tip I can see past the curve of his jaw as the cigarette slowly dies and empties its ghost into his lungs. I really wish he wouldn't do that, as the first whiff of nicotine drifts my way in the confining walls. I wish he wouldn't harm himself so intentionally.

It's not like you need something else to help and kill you.

Duo whips his head around, cigarette pinched hatefully between a pair of lips set crookedly in his head, marring his normally youthful, favoring expression. He stares at me, boring me open once again in that effortless way. I can't breathe at all, and my heart has stopped beating, for it is still skewered on the wall. For a moment, the color of his eyes kills me—much brighter than before that damned book—and then it is contempt's turn to do so, for he grimaces at me. And it kills me again.

But I couldn't have said that out loud. Or did I?

And then, I notice the discoloring circling his left eye that serves to accent the violet in his gaze.

He stands up and an angry stream of blue-gray smoke plumes out the corner of that grimace. He tosses the pack of cigarettes to the bed with a highly displeased flick of the wrist, and shears his eyes away from me. "Don't worry," he grumbles at me, stitching his brows together, stalking away from the bed, "I didn't jeopardize the goddamned mission."

And that's when he chooses to slam the bathroom door behind him, effectively landing another shot into the cavity in my chest for no apparent reason.


	5. a paper bird

Chapter 5 _a paper bird_

For a moment, I truly do not care should the perimeter guard casually glance downwards into the foliage and catch sight of me, not daring to breathe on the cold, black shine of his shoes. For a moment, it erases my primitive survival drive, this subconscious agony I have been trying to avoid unearthing this evening and putting myself at the mercy of the violet eyes lurking in memory.

Warm, calm breaths leave my body, countered an even second and a half later by an equally controlled intake of turbulently cold night air. The dew-ridden grass gently brushes my jaw, running terribly ticklish lines down the front of my neck.

But I must not make a noise. I should care if I do, but momentarily, the concern leaves me. For a moment, I almost wish he would. I am staring up into the cleaned barrel of his issue rifle as it swings idly at his hip, just inches above my head.

Maybe then Duo would care.

The foliage is gone again, the stars melting away into an earlier time. For the countless time that night, my higher, functioning brain leaves the dim, animalistic one in the wet, cold grass, and I am again in that room.

By no means would I describe myself as capable of excessive bouts of emotion—and even if I would, to admit such weakness would be blasphemous to the will to survive—but I hate that room. Even now I dread the return to those four walls. Perhaps that is partly why a section of my mind even hopes for the guard to catch sight of me. I am there again, despite myself, despite my best efforts. The cold starlight hanging over the munitions storehouse becomes the cold starlight painting the dorm where Duo and I stand at opposite sides of the room.

He is standing near the wall, standing over the array of weapons he has laid out. To a rhythm only he truly understands, he is picking up guns and rearranging them, running his fingers along the cold metal before putting it away in a case and shutting them when they grow full.

Every time he bends down, I watch the mist of lunar light paint his back in the dark, where his braid shifts ever so slightly with each movement.

I have been watching him for some time, but he has been silent even longer than that.

I don't make it policy to dig where I don't belong when it comes to the other pilots. Of the few I've met, Duo is the only with whom I have any semblance of a true human relation, and, as he would say, I don't want to fuck it up.

But I know what happened. The words don't serve a purpose. They would only serve to irritate the situation more should we exchange them.

The bruise isn't fading much, but the darkness conceals it. After he had sufficiently locked himself in the bathroom, I had gone determinedly back to my laptop. My only source for a sense of control in an increasingly uncomfortable tension between us. After a few minutes, I knew had opened the window and, scaling the two stories to the ground below, gone out. To where? Somewhere without me. And to do what? Something without me.

I couldn't stop him from doing it. I had no right to, I had no need to. But something in me, something that could not abandon life and fade away but instead remained, writhing and fighting for breath in my body, wanted to know.

He came back a few hours later, still sporting a smart bruise from the miscreant student who'd bestowed it upon him for pickpocking his smokes—a humiliation unadmittable for a war pilot of Duo's caliber—and opened the bathroom door. He looked at me, typing on my computer but only in a hollow way, and then went to work preparing for the mission.

And eventually, I found myself on the other end of the room. Supposedly preparing, but only darkly watching my hands move without me. No longer could I ignore him and push myself to the task at hand and him out of mind.

He was far too powerful for that, scowling every other moment at my mind's eye, cigarette pinched in his mouth.

And now the room becomes a long track of black cold, ever-lengthening.

I hate this.

I am not emotional, but I hate it.

Duo would say, "fucking hate it."

But Duo does not have anything to say to me anymore. And therefore, I have no one to listen to.

A paper bird I am likened to, and breakable, all of a sudden.

A distant explosion takes me away from myself and throws me into myself. Not so distant anymore, the boiling hot orange-yellow fire leaps into the sky in terrifying amounts, bursting forth from the roof of the storehouse in angry punches. They scald the icy stars above, hiding the lowest in a broiling, rippling blanket of heat, spreading outward from the force of the detonation. Like the tiniest touches of an artist's ink brush, the debris floats black and delicate against the shifting, swirling, hellish color. In reality they are tremendous, jagged chunks of superheated metal, able to sear my skin off with a casual brush.

But reality seems to be running away with me lately.

The guard instinctively cringes away from the eruption of light and the concussion of heat and power that follows moments later. The orange light burns on the edges of his uniform and he lunges toward the ground, out of control, gun rattling on his hip from the movement. From my nest on the ground, barely hidden from anything, the shock wave moves overhead, and I lurch up a moment later.

He falls now, his windpipe crushed, into the foliage where I had laid. For a moment, I stand there in the orange hell of light and heat Duo has set into motion, no true fault of his own, and look at the soldier. His beret has fallen loose from the assault, lies in the grass, and reveals his scruffy, young hair. He lies in my soft impression, dying without knowing it.

I was lying in his coffin, and took him when I decided. The idea sends cold down my spine while the explosion sends heat melting down my back.

Is that what Duo thinks about when he talks about Death?

Or does he think about me?

That's the thought that comes to mind as I lift my head and glance over at the black figure beside me now, registering in my mind as that of Duo's familiar face but not in my mind that it is him, watching me cautiously. The black smears of paint decorating his face are strange looking, I think, but it is his expression that is truly strange.

"Heero." The sound makes me shiver again, but this time it is a warm back and a warm spine.

It is the third time when I respond.

Duo is standing a few feet away and staring at me. Not in an odd way, but in a sad and old way. "You've been here for five minutes," he tells me, but I'm not sure he's really telling me. It could just be his eyes. "Let's go."


	6. zygomatic arch

Chapter 6 _zygomatic arch_

I don't remember falling asleep. I don't remember lying down in bed, I don't remember kicking off my shoes, I don't remember putting my hand around the handle of the door and twisting it in the dead quiet corridor, with Duo at my back. I don't remember when he followed me in and softly closed the door behind him, easing it shut with his palm against the frame until the metal clicked into place. I don't remember feeling jealous of that door, of how it still retained its logical place in life, while mine had been tossed out of the boat and now floated away from me, deeper and deeper into the green-blue murk.

I don't remember Duo stepping in the bathroom again, nor the starchy white cast of the lights that poured out from it. I don't remember blandly standing at the side of my neatly made bed for what could have been five minutes, or a blink of an eye. How could it even be possible to count the ten elusive moments I so desperately needed to obtain from Duo only a short time ago.

Since then things have changed in ways I can't even think to describe. I think I am feeling the age of my war.

I don't remember the sound of the faucet running hot water, nor the way the bed staggered back in forth in my vision, nor my knees giving way to my legs, allowing my body to swing as it would please and put me crookedly on the bed.

I don't remember the sensation of heat following me, even as I lie there, completely clothed, nor the coolness of the sheets on my face, nor the uncomfortable throbbing of the soles of my feet. I don't remember the passage of time between when the starchy white light left and when Duo's thumb touched the front of my top lip and pressed, smearing all the way to the side of my face, just below my ear.

I don't remember these things because they were simply lost in the abrupt surge of adrenaline and heat that went straight to the center of my chest and the pit of my stomach. I stiffen up beneath the touch, eyes closed, shoulders hunching, lips pulling back and teeth setting in defense.

Duo's low voice cuts in, halting the response. "Hey," he whispers in that cool, deep tone. This sound is not his eyes talking to me this time. "Shh. You're tired. Go back to sleep, buddy, okay?" The mattress is now sinking beneath added weight, but the sensation is like a whispering ocean wave with my eyes closed, and gentler.

For a moment, I can forget the adrenaline surging to my heart and simply heed that voice, obey that easily followed command, and not think about anything but Duo's thumb touching the skin where my jaw begins into my neck. But he can sense it, almost as if he could hear it in the dark, and I can hear him smirk at me in that half-reproachable way I imagine him.

"I'm not going to hurt you. You know that," he says, lifting his thumb. His fingers are set against the jut of my jaw, steadying themselves for another touch. I shiver. Duo doesn't say anything for another moment. The cool, slightly oily texture of the paint rolls off my skin onto his, and again, as his touch travels up the curve of my cheekbones.

"You're so tired," he murmurs suddenly, almost causing me to flutter my eyes open to look at him, but he puts his thumb gently to the corner of one and grazes it around the zygomatic arch beneath. I am almost gone again at this, drifting away from reality and into something much less colorful and loud. But something pulls me back to the surface of a deep dark lake in which I'd been sinking, trying to break my daze with oxygen and tell me something.

Duo's weight moves again. I don't know where, but I feel it. And it somehow comforts me when I feel it again as he shifts. His hand moves away, then comes back a few moments later, warm, not cool anymore. Clean.

"Get some sleep, Heero."

I push a sound against the back of my lips, which are comfortably sealed together in the same exhausted contract of my eyelids, and he makes one in return. "Yeah, buddy," he says, the distant laughter in his voice the last thing guiding me downwards into the water again, "me too."

I wonder what he was as well, but I am gone, whether he would come with me or not.


	7. oversight

Chapter 7 _oversight_

If I had a deity to thank for the existence of the weekend, I would be. It is hours past the crack of dawn before I even know I am alive again, pressed into the mattress with a heavier body than I'd known before.

The exhaustion leaves me finally, releasing me in a simpler realm of general weariness, and my eyes squint open on the sun glaring into the room. I scrunch up my nose and grimace into the orange light. No one remembered to drop the blinds, and now I lie in the slim, cramped bed, paying the price for the oversight.

The thought occurs to me to simply rise out of bed, then, and avoid staring into the low sunrays getting in by dressing and finding some productive activity. I cannot afford to lose proficiency in anything at this point. I could review last night's mission in advance for the report. I could find a decent breakfast in the kitchen downstairs and exercise. I could even open up the dormant laptop resting across the room to look for an inevitable encrypted invite to another mission, another long, fiery night.

But it is a Saturday morning, a voice tells me.

The warmth around me seems to pull away and I pull myself out of the tangle of blankets only long enough to walk the immeasurable, chilly distance from that bed to the offending window. With a certain amount of contempt for the inanimate object, I right its wrong and step back towards the place I had come from, eyes drifting comfortably close again, now shielded from the sun.

The air is significantly colder than normal. I clutch at my arm as I move back to that desirable position, lying and finishing a restful session of nothing. I feel a wave of goosebumps along my open skin. I yawn. Without really opening my eyes, I am walking back towards my bed. That is when I notice the slightest difference in appearance of the blankets, as if some—

"Shit!"

My own gruff voice throws out a curse and the half-obscured lump takes this moment to disappear from my bed, the lip of the blanket flopping backwards and revealing the crinkled bedsheet beneath. I do not register this for a moment, as I am currently hissing and gritting my teeth. My large toe is screaming, a red hot coal attached to my very flesh, and I am hopping backwards on the other foot as I curse and clutch at it.

I do not fail to give the bedstand a retaliatory glare before continuing on.

What I fail to do is realize that Duo is lying on top of his blankets on the other, rather pristine bed until I have crawled underneath my own in the hopes of regaining the oblivious sleep I crave.

It is not nearly as warm as it was before.

* * *

I am alone again when I roll over on my bed. Duo's bed is made, and he is gone from the room. Before I allow my mind to wander in the direction where he should be, as if drawn to a light and knowing it very well shouldn't, I pull myself out of the blankets. I decide to go to the library.

The sun has long crawled out of hiding. I feel almost cowardly, walking through that particular aisle of books, freshly rolled out of bed and dressed in jeans and a wrinkled white uniform shirt.

On any other day, I would have put forward the effort to make me appear as calm and collected as possible. Any other day is not this day.

I am not stupid, Duo should know by now. I am neither as socially backward or emotionally dense as my exterior would suggest, and it was not lost on me as I crawled back into my bed that the missing warmth was him.

But I am so exhausted, I cannot think of the repercussions. My heart throbs dully in my chest, just as powerful, just as intoxicated, but my mind and my body simply can't take the constant alert. All I can do is let my feet take me to a quiet, empty part of the world where I will be safe. For now. And they take me to the library.

His bed was untouched. I know he lay there with me, long after I had fallen asleep.

But I am so tired. I can't think about it. I won't.

The towel beside the bed was covered in black paint. He had rubbed it from my face, lying comatose where I fell and unwilling to respond to the world.

My feet halt in front of a very familiar book. I am looking at it, but I am looking through it, as well. I can see the shelves behind it, stocked with books. I can see the distant wall, the gleam of the light on the windows. I can see through that window, and I can see into the dormitory. I can see Duo again, standing in the bathroom doorway, face wet, towel around his neck, watching me lie motionless.

But I shake my head and rewind. The book is staring back, with smug print and a tempting spine. With a terrible sort of attractive grin and eyes the exotic color of a colony-born. With a silent mouth and dissecting gaze. I shake my head and rewind again.

This time it is just a book.

I pick it up and fall back into the dusty old reading chair. As I open the pages, the images of Duo began to ebb, though the current never dies, and I bury myself in the information it provides me. I force myself not to think about him, or the experiment I was foolish to believe I could even attempt.

I am so tired. I don't think it would have mattered how much I slept (even with him lying just beside). This is a much deeper weakness.

And I fully intend to avoid it as long as I can.


	8. cruel thing

Chapter 8 _cruel thing_

I close the book a little while later. My feet had curled up underneath my legs on the chair with notice on my part and had begun to turn numb and were covered in tiny needles. I was sitting deep back in the reading chair and I could look straight up and ahead into the empty space where it belonged. The last, carefully constructed words remained in my mind for a minute, a fading impression, until another feeling overcame it.

I felt nothing. Nothing new, nothing extraordinary, and definitely without so much as an idea of what to do next in his strange contest. And when I closed it, pressing my palms against the cool, hard cover and the enchanting black and white face imprinted into it, I still didn't have any idea. It is a cruel thing, almost, to have sparked such a terrible curosity, unending fixation with little cure, and not to leave instructions as to what to do with such an affliction. If a book could laugh, this one would.

I now know more about the human face—I know everything about the physical links needed to draw a smile, the basic colors of human expression, anything the book can supply me—but Duo still mystifies.

It burns to think about everything I could have done in his sight, in his light, in his wake, and wonder how things would have been. That desperate, clutching thought, that ruinous obsession that now controls me. How would his eyes have gleamed and burned had I caught them and made him understand—to act out that internal scene that drove me to this precarious position, if only to get it out of my system? How would he have gazed back at me, had my mouth betrayed me and said something I was afraid to say? Would it have been as terrible as I fear? Would he have let the disgust seep into his false smile and expose his true, loathing feelings for me?

Or would I be wrong?

Would he have stayed in that bed until I rolled over, instead of leaving me there?

Would he have cared about my worry? Would he have spoken to me, rather than run and hide?

Would he have held the side of my face and let me open my eyes instead?

Would I not be questioning things so much? Would I still know what I was doing in this insane world?

A war could have been enough for me. But no—I decided I needed a crush to complicate matters further. I decided I had to stare into my comrade's eyes just to see if I could make him fall in love with me. But it was never just an experiment. I can see that now so clearly, but it's a vision earned through turmoil, and I just feel sick.

"Heero Yuy never turns down a challenge, does he?" I mutter to myself. I feel my bones and my soul sink back into the fabric of the chair, defeated by gravity and letting it do what it would. I am still exhausted, and it is a fatigue unaffected by sleep. I sigh and let my eyes slip close, still limply holding the book in my lap.

"No, you never do. And I've never seen you fail, either."

Duo's voice is unmistakable, and his body like a magnet, pulling every atom of my attention toward him when I startle and look up. He is standing in the aisle, not far from me, and I blink at him like impossibility for a moment. His eyes are violet and beautiful and smiling over the edges of his sunglasses, cutting through to the bone.

My hands automatically close the book and my blood courses thick through my face and into my fingertips. The entire contents of my chest cavity rearrange themselves and lodge themselves firmly at the top of my throat. And suddenly, holding the book is the most engaging thing I could possible do and I set my eyes tightly on it. Concentrating. Trying not to let my emotion take control again.

(Too late.)

Duo never stops smiling. I can feel it as I determinedly watch my fingernails grow, all the while watching him with every higher sense and no detectable sign of interest. He leans up against the bookshelf slightly, one hand reaching idly up and nudging a book out of the immaculate straight line and toying with it. He puts the other hand on his hip, making the fabric of his dark shirt shift audibly, and bends a little forward.

"What'cha reading?" he asks calmly.

"A book." It's the only thing I can think of—I don't mean to be caustic.

Duo lifts an eyebrow. "Hmm. You don't say." I am too busy trying to push the sound of his voice out of my mind (and since when has it been so velvety to the ear?) when he speaks up again. "What's it about, Odin?"

He enjoys using my codename. It makes me more anxious now. I feel like a child caught reading material for a boy years older than him and blushing underneath his mother's scrutinizing eye. But it is worse. This time it is Duo's eye, the only one I want to impress so badly it's making my entire being turn and leap like a fool.

"A face."

The eyebrow lifts again. "A face?"

Shit. He's laughing at me. "The human face, I mean," I manage out. I can feel that coldness seeping into my tone, something I resort to automatically. I have no idea how it can disguise such a tumultuous emotion clawing at me, but I thank the stars it can. It is only then that I look up at him as I cautiously loosen up.

But behind that smile I think he notices.

He reaches down and I numbly reach my hand up, lifting the book up to him. He hums again and I feel odd all over. And, opening the cover, I feel red hot and embarrassed, almost. His eyes skim over the first few words over the rims of his sunglasses. I can't stop watching, even though he could catch me at any moment. He flips a page. "Is it interesting?"

I nod.

And pray he doesn't get to that dreadful page.

"It sounds good. Have you read it all?"

I nod again. I don't know now if I could make a sound if I wanted. But luckily he knows how to read the slightest tilt of my head out of the corner of his eye. He hums again.

"So this is where you've been slinking off," he grins, suddenly dropping one hand and clapping the book close with the other, looking down at me. And for a moment, neither of us talk. He just smiles and I hope that smile doesn't mean he's peering into my mind.

And then he says, "We have to go. There's three bogies are headed for the stony ridge to go look for some snakes in the grass."

"Lions?" I ask. I ignore my throbbing heart for a moment and fall back into a familiar pattern. Three mobile suits, heading for our Gundams.

"No, bulls. Mean ones."

Three Taurus suits.

"And that's not all, Mr. Hito. The principle's going to call you to the office in only a few minutes to arrest you." My stomach turns cold. "Someone saw a pair of ghosts that shouldn't have been there on the security cameras." And that's when he pulls the gun from his underneath his dark shirt and gives it to me.


	9. a whisper in the static

Chapter 9 _a whisper in the static_

It is not in our best interests to walk into traps. That's why I suggest we avoid simply walking out of the library and risking the threat of being seen by anyone with knowledge of our activity or orders to accost us. Duo automatically shows signs of dislike. He knows my plan for escape will not be simply climbing out the window, and he is right, but not pleased. I read this emotion from his body language, for I cannot drift near the bone structure of his face without setting off a thick and inherent panic in me. So I avoid it. I close my mind on anything that is not means to the ends of the mission, though the door enclosing it is weakened and splintered in the middle.

I reach for the gun and take it. It is gone the next second, as if I never held it at all, small enough to hide in my pocket. Duo's body turns away from me ever so slightly, as if to casually peruse the titles of books, and he does the same. His eyes scrape across the room, then turn back on me.

For a moment, I feel nothing go into my lungs and the lack of oxygen makes my vision teeter. There is something about them that kills me a little more and more. "We're clear." A corner sinks in his mouth. "So, I take it you've got an idea."

"Yes."

Duo's eyes glint down towards the chair where I had been sitting before. Violet. "Are you going to leave that there?"

Blue, but not entirely. Only those born of several generations of colonists could display such a color.

"Heero."

I start at the sound of my name. And then I curse internally, reaching down for the book that I left on the chair, and stuffing it back into the shelf self-consciously. I was getting lost again, and in a moment of danger, no less. I'm gettting worse. "Let's go," I say, purposely clipping my voice as to hide any sign of nerves.

"Ventilation shaft?" Duo asks.

I nod. I'm not sure now if he really did say my name, or if I heard it in place of that hollow code name.

I can see him want to sigh, but he grits it between his teeth instead and follows silently.

* * *

I stop at the door of the small bathroom on the far end of the library and step inside. The light inside glows on a tiny white room with a toilet and sink. The floor tiles are a hideous green, but my eye travels from them up the wall and rests on the ceiling instead. Duo comes in only a few moments later. His head is low, eyes tightly controlled, and comes to rest next to me, raising his gaze to the ceiling as well. I notice the frown is gone.

"Let's just the hell get out of here," he says. He never talks like that during missions, and again I startle into motion.

How many times have I hesitated just because I heard his voice, just because he is so physically close and tortuously silent? Too many. He is noticing. My weakness is becoming far too powerful.

I make up for my lost time and step up on the closed toilet, clench my fingers around the cold metal slats, and rip a hole in the ceiling.

Duo takes the vent cover from my hand and sets it on the sink behind him, his eyes never leaving the exposed black square overhead. I anchor myself with a deep, steady breath before pushing off the lip of the toilet and hoisting myself into the narrow airway. Adrenaline, hot and uncomfortable, pours out through me from the effort of lifting my body weight without knocking my shoes carelessly against the metal. I notice it more now than I ever have. It is not the same chemical that bolts through my body when Duo looks my way when I am not looking at him.

He is only moments behind me as I settle down to the tedious process of pulling myself through the ventilation shaft without buckling the noisy metal with my movements and letting all within earshot know that there are two, teenager-sized things in the walls. My shoulders barely fit within the cramped space, which was definitely not built with a terrorist's interest in mind, and the smell is cold and metallic and not completely pleasant. My body is taut with the effort.

Duo must agree, for he muffles a grunt of discomfort and growls it out instead. Without another word, we both begin a long trek using nothing more than the soft muscles of our forearms to drag ourselves.

For a while, I don't think of him.

But it cannot last.

The P.A. permeates even this miserable place. "Odin Hito to the principal's office," it calls, echoing dully in the metal around us. Duo does not hesitate for a moment, but I do, and he brings it to my attention by putting his hand on the sole of my shoe. I can instantly feel it in my throat. I can feel it in my face. I can feel the mattress shifting around me. I can feel his thumb under my eye.

"Hey."

I feel sick to my stomach all of a sudden. Every sick feeling administrated by Duo's eyes in the last few days seems to resurrect simultaneously into a terrible that the walls are the linings of some beast's stomach. And the feeling is worse than I expected.

"Stop it," comes the strangled noise from my throat. Immediately, I can feel my face flare with embarrassment at the rough and uncontrolled sound. Duo's hand leaves my foot, but I cannot read how he is reacting from this position.

"Wait a minute. Did you hear that?"

Duo and I freeze. Neither of us has spoken.

The muffled voice is soon followed by another, grunting an agreement. "A voice. There."

Three feet away, a square, icy white panel of light rises into the dark shaft from another cover, looking down into an inhabited room. I can hear the tiniest sounds of quiet movement, and I know at that moment I've made a mistake. No civilian hears things talking in the walls and simply ignores it. They are looking for us. And they know where we are because of me.

Duo grabs my ankle, exposes the skin and presses his mouth against it. "Just go!" he mouths silently on my skin and I read it with a hot coil twisting in my stomach. My brain suddenly breaks off from my body and my ears are thick with something and unusable.

I feel sick. I cannot move.

I won't. My body has stopped listening.

Duo's hand clenches tightly into my leg, jarring me as strong as he can. I don't move but to try and suck some air into my lungs. His nails dig into my skin, then draw blood, and he shakes me furiously. I am not there to hear him anymore, but I am a few inches away from myself, desperately trying to heed his orders. It's too dark to see anything but the square of light and the tiny beams emanating around it. There is one, then two, then five more.

Duo shakes me some more and it hurts viciously. I open my mouth and there is nothing there, not even a puff of air. My jaw closes and when it opens again, it is lined with hot liquid, which I expel onto the metal in front of me. Oh, God, but does it hurt. Why would Duo grip so hard? And in my stomach? My chest?

Another beam of light appears close to my mouth and I watch the liquid dimly drip into the hole and down to some hazy destination below I cannot make out.

Duo is clawing his way on top of me and pressing his body on top of my back. There is no more space between him and the ceiling than there is between him and me. And that's when I can hear him, no higher than a whisper in the static that's filled my mind. But his voice is so strained, like he's separated by miles instead of pressing my gun into my spine with his heaving chest. I cannot respond. I won't. I only feel him draw his own weapon and put it to the metal next to me and let off a shot through the ventilation shaft into the space below.

One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, shut the door.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

I don't hear the screaming anymore and I let go.


	10. no argument

Chapter 10 _no argument_

I have made a mistake. I can realize it now. I have not seen Duo's face for some time now in this darkness, but I can picture it, and I know that everything I've done has been in vain as I imagine his lips curl back in a smile.

I got tricked. It wasn't supposed to be me who fell. It's unfair. His eyes were mirrors. They bent the rules. They turned my own scheme against me without even knowing what they had done. Pierced on my own sword. There was never a chance for me against a gaze like that, a beautiful soul that didn't need me in the least. The moment I reached for him, I was already over the edge and grasping at something I could not have. And no one bothered to warn me.

This is unfair. And it hurts more than I expected, so tender and innocent just a few days ago. Before the words of a book led me to believe that I could simply have Duo because I wanted him.

In fact, the pain tears through me. It's a superheated railroad stake that launches into attack, searing through the flesh of my upper chest, nestled in a hot, painful cove between my collarbone and shoulder. Another sits in the lining of my stomach. The second is sure to be as equally painful, but I cannot tell. There is little more than a fuzzy sensation of lessening existence spreading from my ribs downward. Thank the gods for small miracles.

My body screams without words and all I want to do is crumple into myself. Even though I know it will not do a thing to help me, I do it anyway. I do not know where I am, but I am unfettered by my usual caution and roll onto my side to better cringe at my wounds. The single movement casts whatever senses I had been grasping onto into terror and delirium. I can feel my head spinning even though I can't feel anything else. Darkness is the rule, and I don't have the energy to test it. All I have now is the clutching, desperate need to fix the pain I can still feel, but with every attempt I make, it deepens.

Death now seems the most attractive option. After all, I fell for Him.

For a few more minutes, hours, or days, I am unmoving in the dark and accompanied by pain. And, as abruptly as it began, I am back. And reality is back. Unfortunately, it does not leave my hungry friend behind.

It is dark. My eyes take longer to adjust than normal and it is only one of many worries I add to my mental list. It doesn't stop growing, either, when they do clear of pain and exhaustion.

Judging by the dim violet of the sky above, night is coming. I am lying on my back now, my vision allows me to ascertain, staring up into color and shivers of the forest canopy. The gentle hiss and hum of life around me is thick. Where I am still connected to my ragged body, I feel the tips of the grass touch my skin. On the furthest edge of my eye, I can see the camouflage net staked into the ground, concealing the enormous beasts, our greatest weapons, our lingering curses.

We are at our Gundams again.

Duo is sitting beside me. His thigh runs parallel with my hip. The heat coming from him runs past the point where I can feel anything. His neck is craned and he is looking out into the forest where some soft noise draws his attention, his braided tail of hair curling down his back. It comes to a halt just at eye level where I lay.

It must be safe. Duo would not take me here if it weren't.

But it everything was all right, he would not sit so close to me.

As if emerging from a dark tunnel, the pain thickens. Bullet in the muscle between the collarbone and shoulder bade of the right side. Bullet buried into the flesh of my right kidney, deeper than the other. Bleeding, even now. I can feel that. The hot liquid is pouring over the curve of my body and drips onto the back of my hand.

Weakness overtakes me and I part my lips. Something wretched makes a noise. It is a moment before I realize I can see again and the darkness clears, leaving only dancing white pearls in my eyes as it fades.

Duo is looking down at me. I can feel exactly where the wound in my stomach lies now, for his hand rests momentarily on the hasty bandage, and then disappears. The bangs move out of my eyes.

There is a line I had not seen before between his brows. The tones of his skin blur together when he moves. The hazy light turns the color of his eyes into something low and dark, and they look through me and into my bones, for I am too weak to be self-conscious. I am too close to death to scrounge for the energy to be afraid of what he may think of me. I'm tired of it.

"Hey." My ears are still thick. He pauses longer than normal and pulls his mouth into a smile. "You alive?"

Neither of us move. The smile wanes.

"They're gone." He reads the thought in my head. I cannot find my mouth to speak and he sees it with grim eyes. "They passed by us a few minutes ago." A moment's silence, then a snorting laugh, but a tired and lukewarm sound. "And no, I was not in my mobile suit. Damn thing's not built for more than one."

It's quieter now than before. The sinking colors, the deepening dark seem to draw them away with the sunlight, pulling away from the sleeping world as not to disturb it. It gently tugs at me, with chilled fingers, to come with it. And if Duo were not there staring, down at me, I would go with it. All I can remember now is being exhausted and lovesick and war-torn. I would go with it without remorse for the world if he were not looking down, pressing his lips tight together.

For a moment, I wish he would let me die in peace.

"I'm taking you to a hospital," he says. "No argument."

I don't say anything. I don't do anything for a moment but think about how beautiful he is. It's better than wondering when I should let go and slip away.

The sigh that runs through Duo shifts through his body and I feel it where his leg touches me. Somewhere blood is shifting, pouring out over skin, cold, stark, and new. Pain starts crawling down from the pit of my stomach, creeping towards my toes. Now I can feel the bullet screaming, puncturing the lining of my kidney, sending blood spitting up out of the wound. It's then that I want to push the pain out through my throat and crumple and never scream again.

But I am too weak. I open my mouth and cry out instead.

"I know, I know," Duo says, and he holds the side of my face, tightening his lips when he looks down at me. His voice drops again, and even I can see his shoulders sink, weighed down, through my approaching death.

"I know. It hurts. You're hurt."

Something cold is touching me, and growing bigger. Only Duo is warm, and he touches just below my eyes, rubbing the blood from the corner of my mouth. I sink into it, and am away from my bloody puddle in the woods. My eyes drift shut.

"But I'm taking you. No argument."

Duo leans down. His arm snakes underneath my shoulder, gripping the skin, and it feels like knives, pulling at a body already wrenched to its end.

"Don't," something distant moans.

It must have been me. Duo stops, and then apologizes in a voice I can barely hear. I feel my body moving, lifted by a pair of warm, shaking hands, and Duo's mouth on my neck, breathing words I cannot hear as he shakes his head and cradles a body I can no longer feel.


	11. a book in a library

Chapter 11 _a book in a library_

I awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling. I push the thought to the edge of my mind, freshly released back into the world and changed out of uncomfortable, hospital-issue clothing.

It has been three days since I jolted awake to the sound of a nurse adjusting a monitor knob beside my bed, mistaking it for another gunshot. But there is little way to know many more I spent in the dark, half-living.

I move quickly through the streets now, as if walking faster could make up for the time lost. Careful not to glance too often over my shoulder or paint on a severe look, I move through downtown with a mind that moves even faster than my feet. The comfort of being half-dead is being free from your own mind. But for now I am alive enough and it races, furiously trying to recover lost grounds.

The laptop was in the dormitory. Hidden, but still not safe. The accounts were settled; the school administration may bar me from the door and attempt to arrest me on sight, but they can't ask for their payment in full. My Gundam still lies in that forest, unattended.

I twist my neck to glance back up the road, scanning for any unwanted companion, before doing my best to casually stroll across the street and look unhurried as I make my way back to the school. I stuff my hands into my jacket and drop my chin.

My body is not in good condition, but there is a pain unrelated to the puncture of a bullet when I finally begin down the walk to the gates. It makes me hesitate, then my teeth grit and my hand sneaks up to my chest. I clutch tightly at the edges of the wound, which turns white-hot all of a sudden and cleaves my empty stomach in nausea.

It is enough to make me put a hand to the wall of the nearest building and have a moment of weakness, but not enough to stop me. I am tired of the feeling, and the sooner this weakness leaves me, the better chance for survival I have.

I glance over my shoulder, see no one taking notice, and step quickly inside the school grounds.

* * *

The first unnerving detail of the room is the silence. Unnatural. It's as if it hasn't been touched at all, though it is impossible that the authorities at the school, which is most likely supplemented by government funds and likewise allied, did not rip through it. The walls are smooth and without a single flaw. Even the tiniest punctures from tacks where Duo would rip magazine pictures and stick them to the wall are now gone. Filled in, covered up, erased. And there is not a sound from the surrounding dorms, not an echo running up the hall from some boisterous voice.

Not even Duo's. Not the sound of his words curling around the filter of a cigarette, slinging out a cheeky snub without hesitation, smirking at some unwitting civilian.

It was easy enough to actually enter the dorms. There was no guard of any kind, and the students did not give any sort of notice that I was there, so it was safe to assume that word of the incident had not reached their ears. The school was doing all it could to keep the news of a shooting and two rogue terrorists infiltrating should some of their private investors loose their faith, and word spread no faster nor more ridiculously through the mouths of teenagers.

Students wandered in small groups around the grounds, sitting in the grass beneath the intermittent trees, and only a few sat inside the dorms. I passed two boys sitting in the stairwell, reading and talking, and met no others on the remainder of the way to the third floor.

Our room—the room was at the end of the hall. The windows were bright with sunlight as I passed them, but something felt intrinsically wrong when I stopped at the door.

And I told myself it wasn't because I was there alone.

But now I can see the small traces of interference. The beds are fractionally maligned, the carpet scuffed at the edges of the walls, the desk a little too clean. They've scoured every inch of this place, it's obvious to see. And now they have the laptop.

A minor inconvenience—it is impenetrable save for me, and all information stored away safely—but the sight of the room makes something cold settle into my stomach.

The calendar is still on the wall. There are five days unmarked by Duo's garish red marker.

And there I see him again, half-kneeling on the edge of the mattress, permanent marker in one hand, reaching up towards the calender, and etching a thick red line through another day beneath a wide-eyed kitten in a meadow. I can still see his lips parting in a laugh, something too carefree to be completely genuine, and baring a grin at the subtle irony of marking off days he could not guarantee he'd ever live to see.

I feel sick again, but it's not from the constant, dull burn of my wounds.

Something makes me step inside anyway, knowing full well it may still pose a danger to do so and I won't find my laptop, nor any trace that Duo or I were ever there, but I do anyway. I am sitting down on the foot of my bed in a moment of physical weakness when I see the slip of paper taped to the inside of the door.

I push the door quietly close and pull it off to read it.

I grimace. That reckless fool. He didn't even encode it.

'_Got it. Meet you later. You know where. – 2'_

There's a cigarette burn in the corner. At least he had some sense not to leave a fingerprint.

But in the back of my head, I couldn't care less about his mistakes and that part of my brain takes control as I take the piece of paper and move quickly back out of the dorm with only one goal in mind. The two boys on the stairwell are laughing loudly now, and one socks the other in the shoulder, face taken prisoner by the large smile he wears, and do not give me the slightest notice when I pass by.

I have to stop at the door, clutching again this time at my stomach. My teeth grit hard, almost so hard I fear they'll splinter and bleed, just to keep the sound pressed down, and I push the door open and keep walking.

* * *

My knees are raw from hitting the pavement, my elbows and hands red and tender, my body white-hot and thundering with blood from loosing my balance and having to stop repeatedly on the journey here, but I am finally here. It is dark by now, and I can barely see through the dusk to the prints I have made behind me in the muddy trail. I leave them. I don't have the energy to think about them now, and I'll be gone before the sunlight sinks completely away.

I am two miles into the woods blanketing the low foothills outside of the city, beside my camouflaged mobile suit.

Duo is standing only twenty feet from where I stop and my knees lock weakly, feeling my breath hiss between my clenched teeth.

My shoulder aches from holding my weight up, clutching at the nearest tree trunk, feeling the fiber digging beneath my nails. A line of sweat breaks free and curls down my face. The soles of my feet throb. Something small buzzes in my ear and nips at my neck, and my joints feel like they're filled with sawdust. The afternoon heat lingers here in the forest, captured by the trees, and makes the air stifling and thick as I pant it in. It makes my head spin, so that I don't see him approach, only when he appears before me. It's so thickly warm that I can barely separate the body heat from his hand from my feverish skin when he touches me.

The side of my face, touching the corner of my mouth.

I lift my head to look back into his face. Again, the dim light blurs his face and he looks surreal, like an angel come to usher me to a gentle death. His eyes are still violet and they still make every part of me want to turn and run. But I look into them for what could be forever and do not tear away. I am just afraid of never seeing them again as I am of what opinion or emotion is behind them when he looks at me.

His hand rests on my cheek and he takes it away when it starts to shake.

"You left too early," he says in a cracked way. "You're too damn stubborn to see you're about to hit the ground, half-dead. It's insane."

"Do you have it?"

He doesn't answer my question, and I am a little upset, for those were all the words I could stand to muster without my vision turning patchy black and spinning. In fact, he shakes his head, lowering his eyes, and laughs. It's a sound that is so retching I feel sick to my stomach.

"Heero," he says, still looking down. "You—" He lifts his hand to his face and rubs it, grimacing and grinning. "You're… just too _you_, you know that?"

His shoulders give one last shudder before he sucks in a deep breath and sniffles harshly. He lifts his head again, doing his best to look perfectly fine and says, weakly gesturing towards Wing, "Yeah, everything's there."

And then gazes back into my eyes for another short eternity, as if he could read them. Was it eight, or nine seconds? Or only one eternal moment?

It is then that he drops the heavy, false expression on his face and I see his true emotion, not just hidden in his eyes. The light does not soften the way his brows hitch tightly, the corner of his mouth curls backward, and his stable posture withers. I feel terrible for him and feel my throat burn as I rasp out his name a moment before he put his arms around my shoulders and his forehead to mine, his shoulders wilting and his body slumping in exhaustion. I never close my eyes even as I put my mouth to his face, just watching him, softly pressing my lips just below his eye, then at the corner of that mouth, willing away whatever pain I can. I linger there, then press my first to his mouth, he presses back, and a sob breaks forth.

He presses his face into the crook of my neck and shoulder now, forgetting caution and throwing himself against my body, despite my wounds. I am mildly surprised that I am not as flustered as I would have predicted, but my mind is far from myself. I tighten the hold and Duo's shoulders move again, jerking erratically.

I know what he's thinking.

So I knot my fingers behind his back, willing my body to hold out just a second more to keep holding him, and tell him in a voice only he could hear, "I'll see you again."

He barks out a half-laugh, still shaking against my shoulder. His tone is twisted and difficult to speak in. "In this world?"

I nod.

"Don't make a prediction you don't believe, Heero," he says. "If you die tomorrow, I'll be very disappointed in that promise."

"I know."

He waits. There is nothing but dusk and crickets around us as far as I am concerned. I am not a terrorist child. I am not an orphan who never knew his name, at least not for right now.

"And quit being so damn stubborn, will you?" he whispers, lifting his face from my shoulder to look at me.

"Only if you quit those dangerous things," I answer him.

He looks at me, eyes scanning my face, and then I see him smile only inches from me. And it was worth almost dying to see it before we were separated again by the dictations of our lives.

I don't leave him for the rest of the night. He is gone, though, when I finally wake up, in the early morning hours, and feel the cold absence grow too unbearable. The front of my shirt is damp and wrinkled and the grass beside me slowly returning to its natural shape, the impression fading.

I don't allow myself to feel too much, but busy myself with getting to my feet, wounds still burning, but less so, and staggering over to my Gundam. Thankfully, my mind and body settle into their familiar rut, allowing me to unhinge the camouflage nets from the ground and climb onto the mobile suit without thinking once about the way Duo had slept against me that night, how small he looked, curled up and defenseless in front of me, how utterly tired—not once.

But I cannot resist it when I find a book sitting, waiting for me, in the cockpit.

I feel my heart twist despite me. I have a feeling that these hours, days, weeks between now and the next time I will hold Duo will not pass as quickly as the time it took for him to completely and wholly steal me away. I am determined to love Duo for however long it takes to see him again, and I realize now that this resolution slept, waiting, in me long before I ever set my eyes upon a book in a library.

But I sit down and open it up on my lap and read it again just to be reminded and pass the time.

* * *

_owari_


End file.
